'Hiring Fairs and Market Places' by May Blair, published by Appletree Press

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extracted from the Appletree Press title Hiring Fairs and Market Places by May Blair.

COUNTY LONDONDERRY

As in most other places, fairs were established in Dungiven and Limavady in the seventeenth century. At that time Dungiven had just twelve houses and Limavady eighteen, set around a crossroads with a stone cross at the intersection. The cross would indicate that fairs may have been held there at an earlier date (as in Dromore in County Down). Cattle were bought mainly by jobbers who made a living by dealing and by exporting them live through the various seaports. Drovers or dealers boarded the boat with the animals and stayed with them until they were either sold or handed over to a drover on the other side. The nearest port was Derry but they were just as often taken to Larne or Donaghadee for the short sea crossing to Portpatrick. Butter, eggs and poultry were also exported, mainly to Glasgow. Butter was put up in firkins. A firkin was reckoned to be a quarter of a barrel or 56lb weight. Eggs were sold by weight too.
Public buildings in the form of a market house, hotel, parish church and schoolhouse were built in Dungiven by the Skinners’ agent, Robert Ogilby, Esq. around 1830. The old fortified bawn erected by them in 1618 had by this time long since gone. Gone too were the hundreds of humble homesteads that once furnished the valleys and lower slopes of the mountains, and the sod houses built by the young folk in the hills when they went booleying with their cattle in the summer months. Emigration and the ravages of time had taken their toll. By now farm houses, though fewer and further between, were much improved. Most were thatched and white-washed, with a fireplace and chimney to carry away the smoke (no more blackened faces or sore eyes due to the smoky atmosphere indoors). The poorer classes still lived in ‘abodes of want and misery’ – not surprising when a girl’s wages seldom exceeded £2 10s and a man’s £5 for six months.
The erection of the market house and the introduction of a public crane in Dungiven saw a big improvement in the grain and butter markets. At the same time the Haberdashers saw to it that churches, meeting houses, schools, hotels, lodging houses and a library were built in Limavady. All the usual commodities were on sale in both towns. Both also sold sea shells which were gathered on nearby beaches, crushed and used by farmers for improving the texture of the soil. Dungiven specialised in the sale of locally grown scollops [sally rods] which sold at sixpence for ten dozen. These were used for pegging the straw in thatching and in making baskets and stable loft hurls. Misshapen and waste ones, along with briars and pieces of thorn bushes, were useful for making bases for haystacks. The criss-cross of sticks kept the sheaves off the damp ground, though they provided a hiding place for vermin in winter. There was great excitement when the day came that the last row of sheaves was being fed into the thresher, for it was then that rats and mice tried to make their escape. It was not unknown for a mouse to run up the inside of a man’s trouser leg. The trousers weren’t long in coming off if the mouse threatened to make the distance.
Of the two, Limavady had the better linen and yarn market. It was to Limavady that yarn dealer John O’Neill was riding on an August day in 1831 when he was murdered and robbed in the Glenshane Pass. His attacker pulled him from his horse, hit him on the head with a hammer and stole the £100 he had for purchasing yarn in the Monday market in that town. It was all too common an occurrence in those days. Murders also took place on the other side of town on the aptly named Murderhole Road, where highwayman Cushy Glenn attacked travellers in a similar way.
Limavady will be remembered by musicians the world over as being the birth place of Jane Ross, who in 1851 saved the ‘Londonderry Air’ from almost certain oblivion. Jane is believed to have been so enchanted with the tune that she noted down the music when she heard it played in the street by Jimmy McCurry, a blind fiddler. Jimmy arrived into the town on market day and took up a position between the shafts of an upturned cart outside Jane’s home at 51 Main Street. He played his music and collected alms, until overtaken by ill health and advancing years when he was admitted to Limavady workhouse. He died in 1910 and was mourned by all who knew him. He lies buried in the graveyard at Tamlaghtfinlagan. Jane’s last resting place is at Christchurch in Limavady.
Between Limavady and the Faughan Valley lay the territory of the Fishmongers’ and Grocers’ Companies, who early in the seventeenth century built fortified bawns at Ballykelly and Muff (later called Eglinton). Like their sister companies, these built many fine buildings some of which are known only to local people, like Ervey old school-house built by the wealthy Grocers Company in 1831. Until recently this retained the distinctive symbol of the company in the form of a camel embedded in the wall. The chapel and burial ground of the Fishmongers and Walworth Wood, planted in memory of Sir William Walworth, governor of the company at that time, were situated near the bawn at Ballykelly.
The slump in the linen industry in the early nineteenth century put many out of work, causing large numbers to emigrate. Those that were left found work in the mills and tan-yards prettily situated on the banks of the streams which drained towards the Foyle. The Fishmongers arrived in person around this time, constructed new roads and improved the old ones and erected several useful public buildings. They built a canal from Ballykelly to the Foyle but although this was used to transport building materials from Londonderry, it never fulfilled its original promise. Two fairs were held in Ballykelly until 1807, when they succumbed to the success of those in Limavady. The grain market went the same way in 1830. An Old Moore’s Almanac of 1895 mentions a fair at Muff on 11 December but it was probably a fair in name only, or it may even refer to the Muff across the Foyle in Donegal. There is no mention of the bustling fur and meat market once held at Benone every Friday. The fur and meat were obtained from rabbits which inhabited the sand dunes on nearby Magilligan Strand. Buyers came mainly from Belfast. The stretch of coast from Magilligan to Killowen was the territory of the London Guild of Clothworkers, though it was dominated from the middle of the eighteenth century by the wealthy and flamboyant Earl of Bristol, Bishop of Derry. It was he who built the church at Ballykelly and numerous other smaller churches throughout his diocese, not to mention his contributions to Catholic Chapels and Dissenting Meeting Houses. He also started negotiations for building the first bridge over the Foyle, thus connecting the city with the rest of the county. His benevolence towards the poor was legendary. He put forward ambitious schemes for improvements to agriculture and planted thousands upon thousands of trees in the glens near his residence at Downhill. This once fine building is now quietly disintegrating in the winter gales that sweep across the open Atlantic. However the elegant temple named after his cousin Mrs Mussenden still survives, thanks to the care bestowed on it by the National Trust. His official residence was, of course, the Bishop’s Palace in Derry, a modest building by his standards.
The portion of land lying east of the Foyle and stretching to the border with Tyrone fell to the lot of the Goldsmiths’ Company. It included Clondermot, the Waterside and part of Faughanvale – about forty-five townlands in all. They chose New Buildings as the centre of their territory and it was there that they built their bawn, only to see it destroyed during the Revolution of 1688. According to a rent roll of Sir Thomas Phillips, their lands were let out at an annual rent of £331 in 1628.
Between New Buildings and Dungiven lie the villages of Feeny, Claudy and Park, all once famed for their fairs. Friday was the usual Fair Day in Park, Tuesday in Claudy, while it varied from month to month in Feeny, the only certain date being 17 March. Like most other towns all three were strongly influenced by their respective London Companies. Although there was no market as such, hawkers of all descriptions attended the fairs of both Park and Feeny, and bought and sold their wares without having to pay any custom. The fairs in Feeny were much favoured by both cattle jobbers and butchers.
However, the nearest and surest market for the district was to be found in Londonderry. The town, clustered round a hill overlooking the Foyle, was once small enough to be contained within its famous walls. Its history has been well documented from its beginning, when it was known as Derry Calgagh (Calgagh’s Oakwood) and Derry Columbkille, when it was granted to Saint Columba for a religious settlement. It was plundered by the Norsemen time and time again, and was a completely ruined town when taken over by the Irish Society ‘for the promotion of religion, order and industry’. The Society gave them a town to be proud of, a fact embodied in words on the porch wall of St Columb’s Cathedral.

IF STONES COULD SPEAKE
THEN LONDON’S PRAYSE
SHOULD SOUNDE WHO
BUILT THIS CHURCH AND
CITTIE FROM THE GROUNDE

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